Will Night Watch be the movie that will put Russian cinema back on the international cinematic chart again? That would be quite an achievement if you take into account that Russian cinema virtually perished – ironically enough – with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Apparently there was no place for cinema during Glasnost and Perestroika and the number of cinemas was reduced from 10.000 to a baffling 70. With this, also the budgets for movies evaporated, subsequently killing off serious cinema. And now all eyes are on the man that has already been called “the Russian Tarantino”, director Timur Bekmambetov. He directed this top-grossing movie about vampires, warlocks and necromancers, and which marks the start of a genuine vampire trilogy.

Let’s get down to brass tacks: I was disappointed.
I was prepared to like it and I was curious to see what the small hype was about, but aside from the – in Hollywood terms – tiny budget it doesn’t live up entirely to its self-proclaimed underdog status. The small budget was put to good use however, because the movie has quite a mature look to it with some fancy camerawork. And the story starts off quite good also, telling of the century-long battle between good and evil, living among men as vampires and demons. They have closed a pact that keeps them in a tense peace, enforced by a special superhuman police: the Night and Day Watch. Like many of these stories it tells about an entity that will disturb the balance, resulting in eternal darkness, yadi yadi yada.

I have no problem with well-trodden storylines and after the great intro I was ready for a bloodsuckers’ binge. But it was here that the story started to drag and become rather uneventful. As a viewer you get hauled throughout dreary Moscow and introduced to a bevy of shady characters, many of them seemingly unimportant to the story. It’s just like after 30 minutes the story is told and from there on it is dragging to the open ending. Like many Eastern European movies the storytelling is omissive and it leaves you guessing after the chacaters’ motivations and personal stories. Maybe this will get clarified in the following two movies, however I doubt if they were sure they were going to make a trilogy out of it from the get-go. Nevertheless a shame, because some nice character studies would make the (undead) personae come to life a bit more. Regrettably, there were no heaps of fat action or cool gore to compensate for the lack of depth.

So, all in all a decent effort and hopefully a successful rebirth of Russian cinema. Still, I would like to see more happening in the coming two sequels and less pointless running around.